Mutated Tao

Chapter 623: Chess

Chapter 623: Chess

“These birds... I seem to have seen them somewhere before...” Li Huowang muttered with furrowed brows while staring at the vultures on the ground. He was trying his best to remember where he had seen these vultures.

Li Huowang's expression froze. A few years ago, he had encountered a Lama with a vulture just as he left Qing Qiu.

Is it them? Those Lamas from Qing Qiu infamous for conducting sacrificial rituals? Why would they want to ambush the Surveillance Bureau?

Li Huowang suddenly noticed something amiss. He reached behind him, and his heart sank. His spine sword was missing! These vultures were here to serve as a distraction, and their target was his spine sword!

“My sword is missing!” Li Huowang exclaimed. Peng Longteng appeared next to Li Huowang, and she hurled the latter into the air.

Having been thrown into the air, Li Huowang now had a bird's eye view of everything around him. He looked around frantically, scanning his surroundings.

He wouldn't have been so angry if the other party had come to ambush him, but they had actually come to steal his spine sword.

Li Huowang swore to crush them to dust!

“Daoist! Look, your sword's there!” The old monk behind Li Huowang exclaimed, pointing at somewhere in the distance.

The next moment, the old monk's figure solidified. Li Huowang grabbed the old monk's robes, and the two headed into the distance.

When they got close enough, Li Huowang saw a mandrill wearing a Buddha mask. The mandrill was holding his spine sword and was running frantically through the forest.

The mandrill seemed to have mastered a movement technique that allowed it to move so swiftly through the forest.

“Stop running!” Li Huowang exclaimed. He gouged out his left eye and crushed it. The monkey was instantly enveloped in a strange light, and its movement became as slow as a snail.

Li Sui’s tentacles then reached out to retrieve the spine sword, but a cold light flashed, severing those tentacles.

A strange drumming rhythm echoed immediately afterward. Then, an old Lama wearing a black sheepskin stood between Li Huowang and the spine sword.

He was beating the bone drum at his waist, and there was a bone sutra in his hand.

“The Venerable Uruvilva-Kasyapa, Venerable Gaya Kasyapa, Venerable Nadi Kasyapa, Venerable Mahakasyapa, Venerable Sariputra, Venerable Maudgalyayana…” the old Lama chanted.

Strange cries pervaded the air as he chanted, and the vultures gathered at their location, orbiting the skies above them.

“There is no enmity between us, so why are you doing this to me?! Do you really think I haven't changed at all?!” Li Huowang roared at the old Lama as blood streamed down his eye socket.

The vultures in the air swooped down toward Li Huowang.

“Horse jumps, eat your cannon[1].”

Li Huowang was sitting on a plastic red stool and was dressed in blue and white clothes. His brows were furrowed as he stared at the chessboard placed before him.

He was playing chess against his attending physician Wu Cheng. He was playing chess while listening to something with his Bluetooth earpiece.

Li Huowang picked up his left chariot with two fingers and slammed it down on his opponent’s pawn.

Smack!

Li Huowang’s bronze coin sword struck the old Lama, shattering the latter's bone drum.

The spine sword was in Li Huowang's hands once again, and he breathed a sigh of relief at its familiar coldness.

Li Huowang looked up, and he found that he was surrounded by people.

In addition to the old Lama wearing clothes made of black sheepskin, people wearing white headscarves and black armbands stood around Li Huowang as well. Their outfit told Li Huowang everything he had to know, and he became certain of it as well. These people were followers of the Dharma Sect!

“We're not wearing any disguise. Won't this kid recognize us?”

“We're going to kill him, so it doesn't matter. Let’s wrap this up.”

“General[2].”

Li Huowang looked up slowly at Wu Cheng, who was smiling slightly.

“Are you secretly using a grandmaster-level AI to cheat against me? I heard people can do that.”

“Calm down, Little Li. It's just a game of chess. You don’t need to worry about winning or losing, and losing isn’t that big of a deal.”

“I really can’t figure out how playing chess is related to my condition.”

“Don’t burden yourself with so many thoughts. Just think about it as me finding someone to play chess with because I like playing chess."

Li Huowang took a deep breath and continued with the game. He struggled as hard as he could to make a comeback.

“Take the horse.” Li Sui’s bloody burrowed out of Li Huowang’s abdomen and gouged out his opponent’s intestines.

“Advisor.” Li Huowang’s last eye was covered in a black layer.

“Hey! They’re playing chess here!” someone exclaimed. The nearby patients heard that, and they crowded around Li Huowang out of curiosity as well as to help him against Wu Cheng.

“Er Jiu! We’re here to help you!”

Li Huowang was annoyed at the cacophony of voices around him.

“Shut up!!” Li Huowang roared.

The patients immediately went silent. Li Huowangs' roar had reminded them of his identity, and they dared not speak against him.

Li Huowang continued with the game, even though it was getting more and more difficult to stand his ground.

If Wu Cheng hadn’t been going easy on him, he would have lost long ago.

Li Huowang’s temper grew as he looked at the chessboard before him. He suddenly grabbed the chessboard and was about to flip it out of fury, but Wu Cheng grabbed his hand and pushed it down firmly.

“Little Li, you should stop flipping the table whenever you're losing. Some things can be resolved through flipping the table, but there are many things that cannot be resolved through that alone.”

Li Huowang stared deeply at Wu Cheng.

Just then, a hand reached out from behind Li Huowang's shoulder, and the hand's five fingers grabbed a chariot before moving it forward three squares.

Li Huowang tilted his head slightly and was surprised to see that the autistic chubby boy was the one who had made the move.

The autistic chubby boy was drooling, but his eyes were transfixed on the chessboard.

Li Huowang let go of the chessboard and allowed the chubby boy to fight Wu Cheng.

The chubby boy's play was incredibly slow, but it was incredibly effective against Wu Cheng’s moves.

As time went on, the chubby boy was capturing more and more of Wu Cheng's pieces. It started with just the pawns, but things escalated slowly until the tides were starting to reverse in the chubby boy's favor.

Li Huowang forcefully tore off the old man’s loose skin on his face and looked daggers at the old Lama, who was the perpetrator behind all this.

The old Lama had transformed, and he was sporting heads and six arms. Each head represented a unique death—drowning, hanging, and stabbing.

Just as the old Lama's bone sutra was about to start spinning, Li Huowang pulled out his spine sword and thrust himself into Great Qi.

He located the old Lama’s position within the Great Qi and carved open another spacetime rift. However, Li Huowang wasn't planning on returning to the Great Liang to ambush the old Lama through this spacetime rift. Instead, he opened the spacetime rift directly on top of the old Lama so the spacetime rift would sever the old Lama's figure into two.

When Wu Cheng moved his final advisor, Li Huowang’s lips curled slightly upward. He moved his general and blocked the opponent’s general.

“General versus general!”

The old Lama’s bizarre and aged figure swelled up. The next moment, tentacles of a variety of sizes emerged from his every orifice, and they writhed as they streaked through the air.

Bang!

The old Lama exploded into a bloody mess of flesh and tentacles.

Li Huowang emerged from the old Lama and turned to the Dharma Sect members, shouting, “General! Checkmate!”

1. Chinese chess terms. A few phrases later on that refer to chess as well ?

2. If it's not obvious yet, this is Chess in Chinese ?